What is your current employee retention strategy? If you cannot immediately answer the question, or at least begin envisioning your current organizational approach to employee development, then we’ve already identified a core reason why you are continually hiring customer service representatives.

We know you want to find the best person for the job to fill your open position. But to do that, you have to make sure you are attracting (and not repelling) the best applicants. Mistakes at the start of the hiring process can leave you with a dismal applicant pool, and ultimately a bad hire for your team. So stop scaring off the best candidates by avoiding these 5 common mistakes:

Oversee the onboarding process. Manage employee relations. Maintain benefits programs. Ensure legal compliance. Make policy recommendations. Have you ever taken the time to list all that’s expected of you as an HR manager? Depending on the size of your company, your list could take up pages.

With 2015 budget planning well underway, you’re probably in the midst of defining allocation requests and preparing to defend each line item to senior management. If applicant tracking software isn’t already one of the line items in your budget, you may want to revisit it in light of your overall company and HR strategy.

If you need to convince the people who hold the purse strings why an applicant tracking system is a “must have” item for 2015, consider these five reasons:

The job market has seen its ups and downs over the past few years and so have job seekers. As we explored in a recent blog, job seekers face plenty of obstacles as they search for work. Oftentimes, HR reps and recruiters can make it more difficult for job seekers to overcome those obstacles. For example, posting a job description that does not accurately describe an open position can leave job seekers unsure as to whether they’re a good fit for the position.

If you’ve ever been single, pursuing a relationship of some kind, then you know how unsettling the process can be. One person tries to impress the other, communication flies back and forth, and if, at any point, one person thinks he or she is doing well but the other does not, everything breaks down. The expectations of the eager person are crushed, and the other person moves on in pursuit of something better.

Job seekers face similar perils when job hunting. There’s the anxiety of the unknown and the reality that rejection will probably happen before the search is over. But the responsibility of presenting well does not strictly fall upon the pursuing job applicant—companies have an obligation to attract the best candidates, too. And not all companies do a good job of putting their best foot forward.

Making snap judgments during the hiring process can lead recruiters and hiring managers to erroneously eliminate quality candidates, while selecting applicants who simply aren’t the best fit for the job qualifications or the company culture. Snap judgments are often the result of various interviewer biases, such as: